


Four-Track Mind

by evilhippo



Category: Inception (2010), Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-26
Updated: 2011-10-26
Packaged: 2017-10-24 23:30:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/269123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evilhippo/pseuds/evilhippo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A doctor and a consulting detective, trapped in dreams, thinking their way out as only they can.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Four-Track Mind

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Sherlockmas' "Summer of Sherlock" festival for noirrosaleen, for the prompt "Sherlock thinks the unending summer is suspicious."

The flat is in an 1873 building with no elevator. There are original floorboards on the third step only; the rest have been replaced. The fifth squeaks, the carpet on the eighth is more threadbare than on the ninth. Inside, the fireplace isn't real, but the skull is. The rug in the centre of the room is Turkish, and it's carefully and professionally cleaned each spring. It's been 203 days since it was last cleaned, and it's beginning to show the outlines of where DI Lestrade habitually stands, the path that John follows to the kitchen, and the telltale overflows from Sherlock's occasional experiments.

***

 _“This is exhausting,” the architect complains from a spot in an alley a few doors down. Even in the dream, the sweat of concentration shows through. “Why do we have to have so much bloody detail.”_

 _The extractor makes a motion like zipping lips shut. One never talks about the target for extraction while inside the dream._

***

Sherlock is looking at a book on the coffee table. It has a large footprint in the centre, because he stepped on it on his way to the couch. He wouldn't have stepped on it if he'd known it was there—he doesn't like destroying books. His mind, bored and meandering, seizes upon the book-placement mystery as a means of preoccupation.

Then he remembers that the book has always had the footprint. It's a first edition, and it would be a shame for it to have been damaged so, except it's a first edition of a book of complete nonsense that Mycroft tried to foist upon him late in his college years as a means of “putting his ennui into perspective.” It had been a very stupid joke, even for Mycroft's tastes. The thing made no sense. Not a single word in it was relevant beyond the book's covers, this Sherlock was certain of. He'd read it twice, just to make sure there wasn't an elaborate code worked into it.

Mycroft had certainly sent someone in to put it on his coffee table as a symbolic inconvenience, as come-uppance for his skipping another of their all-important family dinners. Sherlock flipped through it, in case Mycroft had deigned to leave any further disparaging messages inside, but it was exactly as he'd last remembered it. Pages 321 to 342 were still folded over, marking the game he'd always meant to introduce to a hoard of public school boys, to confirm whether the social experiment would play out as entertainingly.

Again finding himself without any particular occupation for his mind, Sherlock turns toward the far wall. He and John had pushed the book shelf in front of the bullet holes in the wall and it crosses his mind to move it back and practice keeping a steady hand for a few hours, until the neighbours ring the police and Lestrade comes to stop him.

He isn't in the mood for Lestrade, so that's an end to that plan.

Everything is horribly dull. It feels like the entire world outside the windows has joined together and passed a resolution to be of absolutely no interest at all. To be as bullheadedly vacuous as Mycroft's government lackeys. It's a disgrace. London like this is a disgrace.

It's also altogether too sunny. That is one of the few traits the street outside the windows displays.

The phone rings. Sherlock waits a cool few moments, so he doesn't seem too anxious for interest, but it's John anyway. He's calling to ask whether they're completely out of the biscuits he likes, because he's at Tesco and doesn't want to have to go out again. There's been a rash of food poisoning in one of the estates. Sherlock would expect that to put most other men off their meals, but John is hardy.

But John, despite the little differences that make him interesting above others, is still not a case.

It feels like the days have been passing like this for weeks, but the calendar says it's been only two days. And something in the back of his mind says it's even less than that. More like the amount of time between when he stepped on the book to now.

But he stepped on the book ten years ago, he remembers again. The muddy footprint is from a trainer, the sort of shoe he'd never wear these days except as a ruse. He stands up to pace, to walk that rare glitch out of his brain. His feet appear to be in socks.

John's entrance with the groceries breaks his concentration (there are 58 stitches across the toe of his left sock) but not the monotony. He stops him from placing the sandwich meats in the same drawer as the film cartridges automatically, without a conscious thought.

He contemplates faking a medical anomaly in order to grab John's attention. It would give them both something to think about, at least for a little while.

This is boring. This is his nightmare.

\---

 _“Nothing is working.”_

 _“Some things are almost working,” the architect mumbled._

 _“We only have until noon tomorrow to get this information to the boss. 'Almost working' isn't going to do. This is supposed to be the easy hit.”_

 _“I have an idea.” The architect pauses and chews on the end of a pen._

 _“He hasn't believed in any of the people you've disguised yourself as. You're going to have to change tack.”_

\---

John Watson is alone at the surgery. Which isn't quite correct—in fact, the surgery is swamped. But Sarah isn't there; she's out taking care of other patients on a home visit, while John is left here to care for all of the walk-ins and appointments himself. The bustle produces a mundane kind of stress, the kind of doldrums that make his leg start to ache.

There's a woman who's let her cold go on for so long that she's developed signs of pneumonia. There's Mrs. Hudson, who claimed her normal practitioner was on holiday, forcing John to give a patient explanation that herbal soothers are non-prescription. Then there's a young boy faking a knee injury to get himself out of football—he confides in John that what he really wants to play is rugby. He sympathizes, but there's not a doctor's note that John can conceive of that excuses someone from football and prescribes rugby instead.

They're all nothing unusual—with the exception of Mrs. Hudson, he supposes.

With five minutes left in the day, he intends to enjoy a moment of quiet, or to at least attend to his voice messages, which he hasn't checked for at least three days. Instead, there's a knock at the door. It's another patient, presumably the last of the day. He's not sneezing or limping. In fact, nothing appears to be wrong with him at all. Except that he's Sherlock.

“We need to talk,” he says before the door can even close behind him. John raises an eyebrow, but Sherlock anticipates his question. “I made an appointment.” He points to an illegible name in the log book on John's desk. “That's me.”

John raises an eyebrow further, slightly unsettled. He'd _like_ for Sherlock to make appointments, even unreadable ones, but the idea of Sherlock actually making one? It's worryingly odd.

“This is all a dream,” Sherlock says.

“What are you doing here?” John replies.

“You're ignoring my statement of fact,” he says petulantly, then pulls the door closed.

John, the very picture of long-suffering, raises an eyebrow and indulges him. It's all he can do, when Sherlock is convinced of something.

“I can prove it to you,” he continues.

“How?”

“You already know you're dreaming. Do you remember going in to work this morning?”

“What? Yes, of course I...” John pauses as he considers the words. He's learned to give Sherlock more leeway in his assertions than most. “No, now that you mention it.”

“Hm,” Sherlock says by way of agreement. “Then the question becomes why you're not awake.”

“It's not because I'm dreaming, then?” John asks, intending it to be a joke though it falls flat on Sherlock's ears.

“No. Look around, John. Do you dream your office in this kind of detail?”

“I don't know, I usually don't pay attention to it.”

“Precisely. So, what are they looking for?” Sherlock muses. “And why are they looking here?”

“I'm sorry, until a moment ago I was pretty sure I was at work. I don't have any idea what anyone would be looking for in my head.”

“Fascinating.”

John, against his better judgement, chortles. “That's fascinating, is it?”

“We need to stop them from finding what they're looking for. If you have any secrets, bring them with you,” he says as he turns on his heel, exiting the room as quickly and as mysteriously as he'd appeared in it.

“Wait, Sherlock!” John shouted, grabbing his cane before following him out. “What secrets?” It seemed like the kind of thing Sherlock should know.

\---

 _“It's not here,” the extractor complained, dumping a medical file on the floor. “He doesn't own anything in the apartment--”_

 _“The flat,” she replies, still in the guise of Mrs. Hudson._

 _“Wherever. This guy's basically like, a monk or something. No possessions. This is the only other place he goes. What could be important enough to be hiding the evidence we need?”_

 _“Whatever it appears to be, he must have it with him._

***

 _“Shut up and concentrate. Be glad he hasn't left the flat yet; if you think this level of detail is difficult, I don't want you to deal with the rest of London. He's picked up another book.”_

 _“Bloody hell.”_

***

In the back of the ice box are three reel-to-reel film cartridges, designed for an old projector but the images on them are exactly nine days old. Sherlock is at his desk, doing his best not to focus on them, and he's flipping through the footprinted book, waiting for someone or something to make its move.

The books on the bookshelf are all carefully catalogued, but the second to last is somewhat anonymous, blurred by mis-remembering. This, to Sherlock, is a cue that they are tiring. He's concluded that they'll soon try to take what they're looking for by force soon.

Sherlock knows that John is upstairs, but he can't hear him. He wonders, idly, whether any of his projections have caused trouble for the intruders. It doesn't bother him that, through the days he's been trapped in this purgatory of a dream, he's counted exactly zero projections. There's only he, and John, and the extractors. He's fine with this, and it doesn't seem strange to him at all that other parts of his brain haven't come forth for his protection. They are all him, and all completely under his control. It's efficient—he will know their opposition as soon as they show themselves.

The phone rings again. The voice on the other end is Lestrade's, but Sherlock is too focused on the present to take the call for anything other than a distraction. Though the real Lestrade might, a projected Lestrade would never be so impertinent as to interrupt a mystery.

Sherlock has no doubt that he was captured as a source of information on the Montengro case; that isn't the mystery. The mob boss at the centre is well-connected, and just eccentric enough to think that extracting the information from his mind would prevent him from reaching the same conclusions a second time, or from presenting the evidence at the trial.

John's presence was somewhat of a mystery, but his appearance had been a boon. He'd been the catalyst for Sherlock's realization of the dream as they conversed. John had always been useful for illuminating things on a level Sherlock didn't often look to.

Finally, the door slams open, bringing the real mystery of when they would give in and take a direct route to a close. Sherlock can feel the bang of the door through every bone in his body, and the dream begins to crumble.

\---

“What do you think?” Sherlock asks, pacing around the body, his shoes landing precisely between the bent limbs as he seeks a different perspective.

“What do I think of what, exactly?” John asks in reply, watching Sherlock work while worriedly glancing toward the taxi stand that would take them back to their flat.

“It's somewhat heavy-handed for a distraction, don't you think?”

“A distraction?” John asks, incredulity creeping into his voice, though in the back of his mind he knows he's letting the dream get the best of him.

“There are three more down the street as well, lining our path back. Some appear to be suffering—they expect you to do triage, but they haven't even done the blood clotting correctly.” At this, he points to the wrist of the victim, where the blood is still wet though rigor mortis has already set in on the body. “They clearly have never seen a corpse.”

John caves and follows the vector of Sherlock's gaze to the syrupy red blood. There's no sign of oxidation and the wound looks fresh, despite the victim's pallor. The details feel so real, and whenever he reminds himself that it's just a dream, he finds himself wondering whether the corpse was one of his projections, and whether some small part of his mind might actually now be dead. His training tells him it isn't true, but the fear is instinctual, and he's learned to acknowledge it and talk it down, rather than indulging its presence by trying to ignore it.

A black cab slows at the curbside and beckons to the two of them. John leads the way inside. It's the first he's seen Sherlock willingly walk away from a crime scene, but even he would admit that there's no mystery to this one.

***

The assailants are between Sherlock and the refrigerator and someone has interrupted gravity. Briefly, it crosses his mind to look out the window to see whether the sun has stopped moving through the sky as well, as if he'd be able to tell whether the Earth's rotation had ceased. It's a stray thought he immediately blames John for. Such are the dangers of irrelevant information.

The best course of action is to deflect, Sherlock decides, and he holds the book to his chest, his finger holding his place at one of the dog-eared pages. One of the two notices and rappels off the wall. Sherlock has only enough time to hook his foot around the leg of the nearest desk, intending to stiff-arm his attacker and redirect their momentum. Instead, he and the table and the book go tumbling backwards into the window with a hollow thud while the attacker remains stranded, swimming a stationary butterfly in the centre of the room, all momentum lost.

The more patient of the two charts a steadier path, flitting between the clutter toward Sherlock, who is biding his time in this slow-motion skirmish, crouched with his legs against the window sash, ready to spring away a second time. A rumble outside interrupts his concentration a second time, and he turns to look out the window behind himself, wondering whether his projections have come at last, if maybe he'd willed them. Instead, the houses across the street are crumbling into nothing, following by the pavement, and the road. At which point the second attacker is on him and he springs.

The force is far less than he expects, and there's a tug at his right leg where the second attacker has grabbed tight to his ankle. Meanwhile, the first has caught hold of the ceiling fan and is now in flight toward the kitchen.

Sherlock shouts “No!” despite himself as the far wall starts to fall. All he needs to do is hold them off for a few more moments until the dream crumbles completely, and futile shouting is all he can manage from his vantage point just shy of the sofa.

And then, out of the corner of his eye, he realizes the one true advantage of the dream's decomposition—John has made it down the stairs silently. He has, in fact, bypassed the stairs completely, and anchored himself to the banister. He aims a shot at the kitchen-bound extractor, grazing his side just enough to redirect his momentum.

“Now we wait,” he says after he pulls himself back to the foyer.

***---***---

The room is cold and white and entirely unfamiliar. Sherlock wakes up with a start and pulls the wires from his arm in disgust. John's return to consciousness is much slower, and it's Sherlock who removes the IV drip from his arm.

“Come on,” he says, pulling John upright as the rest of the extraction team comes to. “We need to get out of here.”

John blinks a few times as his eyes refocus, then he's on his feet and running. “Thanks, by the way,” he says once they reach the door.

“Hm,” Sherlock replies. “Good shot on the extractor.”

The door comes open with a minimum of struggle, and sirens are edging in from all sides of the building, but John stops in his tracks.

“What?”

“The extractor—if you'd shot to kill, they would've had time to prepare for the end of the dream.”

“I didn't shoot anyone, Sherlock.” This time, it's Sherlock's turn to stop short. “I had to drive the cab after you upset the cabbie, but you directed us through...”

There's a bang as a set of double-doors bursts open ahead of them, and Lestrade leads his team through behind the battering ram. Soon there will be debriefs and maybe shock blankets—both John and Sherlock appear shocked at the moment they come through the door.


End file.
